RE: Draft 3 or Genesis of new IANA or who is god?

[Jim Dixon <jdd@matthew.uk1.vbc.net>]

On Tue, 25 Aug 1998, Pete Farmer wrote:

> >> difficulty here is defining who is a member, and how to keep any one
> >> constituency from "stacking the deck" by playing games with 
> >>membership rules.
> >
> >I see.  To avoid members playing games with the membership rules,
> >we have a self-selected board.  That is surely an improvement.
> 
> Jim, I "feel your pain" but don't appreciate your sarcasm here.  

To avoid sarcasm, refrain from pseudo-critiques like the one quoted
above.  To my mind, any group of say 100+ people with a proven 
serious interest in these questions (those who replied to the NOI
or Green Paper?  those who attended the IFWP conferences?) is 
preferable to a tiny clique selected by ye olde meeting behind
closed doors.

The number of people with schemes for stacking the deck is quite
impressive.  The IFWP steering committee has been stuffed with such
people.  Conference calls these days are full of endless 
policy-based discussions; practical discussions about how to arrange
and pay for neutral venues are pushed aside by all those people with 
agendas.

This is the IFWP.  If you think that Jon Postel isn't surrounded by
a small crowd of earnestly smiling advisers proposing one or another
nifty little scheme and arguing that, oh, it just wouldn't do to let
the Great Unwashed in on these private discussions of ours, you are 
very naive.

> As stated in my post, I am uncomfortable with the Board selection
> process as proposed, but I personally have not seen ideas for defining
> "membership" in the "new entity" that was not fraught with problems.

An Interim Board selected by some secret backroom process, a self-
selecting Board, and articles that can be casually changed are much
worse than any membership scheme I have seen proposed yet.  Give me
anyone's membership scheme, even if it is set in stone, it is better
than what the recent IANA drafts have proposed.
 
> Perhaps ISPA UK, Nominet, the LINX, or MaNAP provides some good models
> for defining membership.  I'd be interested in hearing more.

ISPA UK lets virtually anyone join.  They have to claim that they
are somehow providing one or another Internet-related service.
They have to pay a fee ranging from 250 to 750 pounds (more for 
sponsors).  One full member, one vote.  ISPA has about 90 members.

Nominet's members are registrars in .UK.  Anyone can join for 500
pounds (last time I checked). That's one vote, but people who 
register more names can pay more and get more votes, up to 10.
Nominet has 600 or so members.

The LINX and MaNAP are both exchange points owned by their members.
One member, one vote.  The LINX has 50 or so members, MaNAP about 
16.  

All of these organisations have boards elected by their members.
All but MaNAP have had at one time or another feverish interest 
from the membership that seriously affected how the organisations
are run.  

> >Criticizing the drafts is not an attack upon Jon Postel
> 
> I agree wholeheartedly.  However, the central theme of Gordon's post
> *was* an attack on Jon Postel on the (now somewhat wearisome) grounds
> that "his draft" was put together in a secret room by secretive people
> etc.

Uhm, is that a terribly unfair description of the process?  Do you
know who is involved in generating these IANA drafts?  I have seen
at least one list of those involved, but have never ever seen this
openly confirmed by IANA.

> >The IFWP process repeatedly agreed that the new corporation should 
> >have a membership, that the Board should be accountable to that 
> >membership, and that the powers of the Board should be carefully
> >limited.
> 
> And who could disagree?

Indeed.

> The challenge is in turning these desires into a concrete, working
> proposal.  In particular, I am interested in pointers to superior
> approaches regarding election of at-large Board members to the "new
> entity."

During the IFWP conferences many different schemes for appointing
directors have been discussed.  Unfortunately IANA has adopted the
one most commonly rejected.

--
Jim Dixon                                                 Managing Director
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